


brevis ipsa vita est sed malis fit longior

by Slythertwit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ends weirdly because again it’s a very half baked idea, Jesus Lucius is such an irredeemable character I’m happy to write him as one, Post-War, but I still wanted to play around with it, dunno i just can’t go one fic without saying fuck, i just have an idea in my head that I wouldn’t know how to write, one (1) swear, this is nothing basically, vampire!Draco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slythertwit/pseuds/Slythertwit
Summary: Ever since Draco was forced into vampirism, Lucius has been treating him like dirt and he’s slowly starving because of it.





	brevis ipsa vita est sed malis fit longior

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t really part of anything, I wrote it for school but unintentionally liked how it turned out. I have an intense obsession for creature fics, and vampire draco is definitely one of my fucking favourites. Werewolf makes about a hundred times more sense and fits into the canon timeline but hahaha god I don’t care at all.
> 
> This gets REALLY rocky towards the end, but that’s because I was never supposed to upload it in the first place lol. I was kinda struggling. I have nothing better to do.

The grey eyes of his father had never looked so cold. Lucius had stopped talking to Draco a few days after turning that might as well have been a month. His distaste for the thing that Draco had become was abundantly clear; and he had yet to even say it.

He insinuated it when he turned his back on Draco, when he’d stopped calling him ‘son’, and when he sedately suggested that Draco move into the cellars “for the time being”. Draco knew what that meant. He wasn’t getting out anytime soon. He would be kept separate from his family (and his entire life essentially, the only one he’d ever live) because Lucius didn’t trust him to keep his self-control in check, and it was overall far easier to just put a lock on his cage and turn a blind eye, because if he couldn’t see it, then Lucius wouldn’t need to care. Draco knew that when his father said “for the time being”, it really just meant “until he corrected” himself. And Draco wasn’t stupid. There was no cure.

Draco found it ironic that, when it boiled down to it, his father was mostly to blame. The order may have come from Voldemort, but it was Lucius who should have known better than to follow a man he knew was raving mad; who didn’t have the moral code to stop himself from eternally condemning a child. Voldemort had always been a fan of targeting the family members of those who consistently failed him, especially children, so it theoretically should have been easy to predict that Lucius’ son would be an obvious choice to torture.

The dungeons beneath the manor were cool and eerily calm. Sometimes the silence almost felt tangible, almost like if he reached out he could break it with a finger. They were, at the least, an improvement from before. His mother and the elves had helped to refurbish the catacomb-like rooms to be more hospitable, adding rich mahogany furniture and velvet carpet, and transfiguring the stone of the floor into polished wooden boards. Now that the war was over, and Voldemort was dead, the dungeons had no more use.

It was always dark under the manor. There were no windows underground and there were some darker corners that the light of the wall torches and oil lamps just couldn’t reach. It was so maddeningly quiet and somber that it made it impossible to forget that people had died here. Gone insane from the torture, fallen to the horrible jaws of Nagini. Even the walls themselves felt tired, dreary. Draco found that he didn’t mind as much as he would have expected. That, he guessed, had something to do with his change. He hated it. He hated himself.

The darkness seemed almost comforting to him in the lonely hours of the night.

His mother and the elves still came down to see him routinely, although the elves often trembled with nervousness every time they visited him with oil lamps or pots of tea and trays of food. They were getting better though. And it wasn’t as though food, tea or heat did him any good now anyway, but he appreciated the gesture, and therefore found himself unable to stop them. Besides, the calm quiet and the (now arguably flavourless) cups of milky Duchess Grey reminded him of his childhood, and the cold winter nights he spent with his mother, listening to her whisper about whimsical stories of unicorns and mischievous dragons until he fell asleep. Back then he was too naïve to question it.

The whole thing was a gross facsimile of his old life, so close yet so uncomfortably different.

His mother would come to see him every day, or so he’d assumed. Being down here had muddled his sense of day and night, and he relied more or less entirely on his watch that sat in a locket. Occasionally Narcissa would lend him her wand, since his was still in the possession of another person whom he was trying really hard not to think about.

His father never visited.

Lying on his back on his wine-red quilt, Draco watched the flame of a lamp burn weakly, thumb pacing lazily over the familiar smooth surface of metal that was adorned on his neck. His mother had come one night with her hands clasped around a tarnished pocket watch on a long, gold chain. She told him that he should use it when she wasn’t around so that he didn’t lose track of the time or day. It was like she had already given up on him, wholly expecting that his change meant that Draco was suddenly now some kind of savage that scratched tallies into walls. He felt a sting of pettiness at the idea of his mother treating him like a prisoner.

However, she had also told him to keep it safe and out of sight, as Lucius hadn’t known about it, apparently. Not that he would ever need to hide it from the person who was actively avoiding him the most. A small part of him wondered if it had to do with his mother wanting to give Lucius the most passive-aggressive “I told you so” attitude in history.

Whether is was because of the sentiment or the irony or his situation, despite it all, when he’d opened the delicate locket, Draco had sat with his mother and cried. He had been in the dungeons for about ten days then, so she had told him once he’d asked.

 

The lamp flame fluttered valiantly against the cool draft in the cellar, but it didn’t take much before it was extinguished anyway. Draco shifted uncomfortably. The devilish pointed fangs in his mouth ached and itched his gums, and it made him feel sick.

He absent-mindedly reached up and rubbed at his jaw. If he could just sneak out of the manor, then he could maybe catch some poor, unfortunate critter that crossed his path. If he could do that, then at least his hunger would be sated, and then he’d have one less problem to worry about. It wasn’t like he had much option, really. It was that or he end up getting his fangs out anytime some other warm-blooded, living thing came within a 40 ft radius of him. And, considering the only other warm-blooded things that could possibly enter that radius were his family and a bunch of house elves, he was very passionately against that option.

Living like he was now, it was a kind of slowly-executed torture. He couldn’t compare it to normal hunger, like he’d felt before. It didn’t feel anything like the bubbling, growling sickness of an empty stomach. This felt more like being pulled in all and no directions at once, like there was some kind of magnet in him trying to get out. His empty veins tingled with an unusual case of pins and needles. Perhaps most uncomfortably of all was his skin, dry and covered with rashes, pulled taut over his bones. He hated everything about it. He wanted to eat.

Draco retracted his nimble fingers from around his arms and pulled himself from the comfort of his bed. He glanced at the pocket watch clutched in his palm and pulled on a dark robe from the wardrobe. Might as well feed the stereotype.

The blond exhaled loudly and combed his pale fingers through his fringe. Draco wasn’t an expert on his condition, but he knew how biology worked. If he didn’t eat soon, he’d die. And as tempting as the option of letting that happen was, the need to alleviate his physical pain was overriding any self-destructive tendencies he may have developed in recent years.

Draco’s pale feet made no noise as he crept out of the dungeons. He prayed to any higher being that would listen that his father hadn’t set up wards to keep him downstairs. Surely his father wasn’t that cowardly? Although, almost as soon as he thought that Draco had the overwhelming urge to laugh.

He found the double doors thankfully ward-free and unlocked them with a wandless _alohamora_ , although it took several tries to get it right. He felt suddenly intensely grateful for realising the need to practise wordless and wandless spells upon having a maniacal tyrant stay in his house. Draco scoffed, figuring Lucius probably thought his son was naïve enough to assume the lock was to keep _Draco_ safe and not the other way around.

Tiptoeing through the main part of the eastern wing, all of Draco’s senses were on full-alert. Dark light from the moon spilled in through the floor-to-roof windows and bleached everything it’s silvery fingers touched. He began approaching the spacious stairway hall. If he could make it to the window perched on the far wall, he could sneak outside that way. He was on the ground floor currently, so that meant he would jump out next to Narcissa’s rose garden.

The rough carpet beneath his toes scratched the bottom of his feet, and he felt the skin on his leg begin to break under the strain of his haste as Draco forced himself through the house. Part of him was instinctively telling him to go back and stop sneaking around before his parents caught him and told him to go to bed, but it was an irrational thought, and his life wasn’t like that anymore even if he wanted it to be. Draco wold have to do a lot of work to get his mind to rewire itself.

After taking a brief moment to collect himself, Draco acted like clockwork, the path ingrained in his head deep enough that he could do it blindfolded. He turned left, then there ahead of him, the large stained window sat. Normally proud and bold during the day time, it looked far more timid when the sun wasn’t beaming down on it, projecting its salient, bright colours. Draco moved to stand under it, and looked down. Sure enough, the vast, ostentatious rose gardens stared up at him confrontingly.

 _What_ _are_ _you_ _doing_ _up?_ The roses — spattered like drops of blood amongst the thorns — seemed to say. He wiped at his eyes weakly. Maybe this hunger thing was getting to his head.

Reaching out to the brass lock, the metal clicked as his skinny fingers pushed it up. His breath stilted in his throat and he noticed his fingers were quivering. This would be the first time he defied his father. Almost. Surely he could justify himself, Merlin forbid Lucius ever found out. Although, getting Lucius to pull his head out of his ass would probably be a lot harder than being right. And besides, his father hadn’t explicitly said he was never to leave the awful cell he was supposed to be understanding about. Gently pressing against the glassy pane to open the window enough to squeeze out, Draco figured none of that would matter in his father’s eyes. In the end, he was in the wrong.

Except he couldn’t really bring himself to care right now. He needed food, and like a moth to a flame, he found he couldn’t help himself as he slipped through the gap and landed, soundless as ever, into the garden.

He hadn’t been caught yet. Hopefully his parents wouldn’t decide to take a midnight stroll around the manor and discover the open window. They unfortunately weren’t stupid enough to think it had been left open accidentally. Well, he had come too far to back off then.

Feeling the earth under his toes, Draco took a second to let out a breath and calm down and actually _look_ _around_ at something other than a sodding dungeon wall. Since his change, almost all of his senses had reshuffled; some were stronger, and some of them did almost the complete opposite of what they did before. Draco decided he had the extra time to stop and adjust to them.

He pushed some branches out of his way that had got in his face when he’d fallen next to them, and wandered airily down the stone path carved through the thick gardens. Just like in the dungeons, out here was silent. But it wasn’t unwelcome like it was in the manor; it was peaceful. There wasn’t the knowledge that people had died here like there was in his damned room. Draco stopped walking and looked around him. It was so beautiful at night. He couldn’t understand how anyone would be afraid of it. The flora of the gardens were dark blueish-green, rustling gently in a light breeze. Even though covered in darkness, the whole world looked brighter than it had been in a long time. Merlin, he was never going to take the outdoors for granted ever again. He almost wanted to cry at the thought of returning back to his stupid damp, rotten cell.

Draco took one last moment to enjoy the garden before he started back off down the path. He was headed to the vast forests surrounding the estate. Technically it was still part of the Malfoy property, so he should be able to wander through without pulling on the wards. He briefly scowled to himself at the idea that Lucius might have removed him from the wards. He doubted Lucius even had that ability however, as the wards were complex magic far harder to trick than one self-obsessed prick. At least they would still recognise him as a Malfoy.

Draco neared the technically-the-edge of the manor itself, he slowed down when grass turned to rotting leaf litter. He suddenly left shy, being in a place he for so long never gave credit to. His backyard or not, it felt… alien. Perhaps because he had never seen it in such a light before.

Deeper in, the woods weren’t as quiet as the dungeons, and for that he felt both slightly better and a little anxious. The soft trill of crickets was oddly comforting in the night. Draco came to a stop by a hollowed tree covered in a blooming orange fungus. Right, time to do what he came out here for.

Draco paused just before he was about to start sniffing the air like some kind of idiot. He realised that he actually had no idea how to catch, eat or even hunt anything. And he didn’t have a wand on him, so it was going to be even harder. Draco groaned as the whole situation started becoming increasingly more complicated. Merlin, he was an idiot. What, did he think food was just going to happen into his poor, miserable hands?

“Merlin’s fucking beard, I did not think this through.” He muttered to himself.

 _Whatever._   _Start_ _somewhere._

He breathed deeply in, taking in at least a half dozen different smells at once. Right, so that wasn’t really going to work. Fidgeting restlessly, Draco willed his whole body to calm itself down and worked on sending the right senses into overdrive again.

He felt something odd tugging at his mind and he looked around instinctively. As if mechanical, his snowy eyes zeroed in on a marten scratching through the dirt for food. As Draco stared at it, he briefly felt sick at the thought of killing an animal and then _tasting_ its blood, but he forced that thought down feverently. He didn’t have choice. When was he finally going to get that? And there was just no way he was going to take human blood. It was way out of his comfort zone, and besides, bite wounds on a person are not at all conspicuous. The amount of suspicion that would arise was not worth the sacrifice. Not to mention, _again_ , that he didn’t know how to feed from an animal in the first place, so a human would likely be disastrous.

He reached a hand up and tugged at his blonde hair in frustration. He was completely on his own with this. Voldemort had him turned into a disgusting, vile creature, but he’d also taken everything about the world he was finally getting used to and threw it to the wind. Draco was alone now, and whether he liked it or not he needed to get a grip and get over it. Perhaps if he ever managed to get over his (unfortunately now literally) eternal shame, he could come out to Pansy and Blaise with it, and get help from his best friends.

Bringing himself back to his senses, Draco found the marten again and crouched down. First thing’s first, if he can’t figure out how to catch it he should at least get out of sight. 

The marten was so far still thankfully oblivious. Hopefully it was a dunderhead, too. The creature ducked into some bushes, but Draco could still tell where it was. Since he was alone in this, he had little options. After vaguely tossing up his chances, Draco decided that because his new mind and body was genetically made to hunt and kill, his best bet would most likely be to trust whatever new instincts he had, and if it didn’t work he’d just have to try again using the process of elimination and sheer will.

Taking one last fortifying breath, he closed his eyes and felt as his body started to pull himself towards the promise of food. Draco’s eyes fluttered back open, and adrenaline continued building in his limbs. There was a brief pause before he felt his body snap, and then he was springing forward from his hiding spot. The bushes rustled, and Draco picked up the erratic movements of the rodent as it immediately began to flee in the opposite direction. It darted towards an upturned rotting tree trunk, not quite making it as Draco caught it by the scruff and tail, immediately bringing it to his teeth. He vaguely felt guilty, and some part of him foolishly hoped it had been quick and painless.

 

The sky was just beginning to lighten by the time he had taken what he could from his catch. The bright red liquid Draco had so desperately needed, like nothing he’d ever needed before, stained his chin and lips, but he hardly found it in him to care. His hands were still clutching matted fur, and the birds in the branches above him had just begun their morning song, and it was then that Draco felt an irrational urge to cry. Which apparently, his brain was already way ahead of him, when he felt cold wet drops splash against his wrists. The full weight of his life from the past 30 days – and hundreds of thousands yet to come – sunk into his back and shoulders and was spilled down his cheeks. So maybe it wasn’t so irrational, as he sat there on the forest floor, hunched over on his knees.

**Author's Note:**

> “Our life is short, but is made longer by misfortunes.”


End file.
